How To Die (Over and Over)
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: Kisaragi Shintaro, a mess in every sense of the word. [shintaro-centric, fairly dark fic]


_i'm living dead-dead-dead-dead-dead_  
_only alive-live-live-live-live-live_  
_when i pretend-tend-tend-tend_  
_that i have died, died, died, died, died_

_- marina and the diamonds_

* * *

The room is dark, too dark, the only noise hanging in the air being the soft click-click of fingers on a computer and the hum of an overworked computer. This is the first Saturday, the first of many, and Shintaro leaves the shades open this time, allowing slivers of light to filter onto the floor. When Shintaro pauses his typing momentarily to stare down at them, something like remorse fills him.

But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. So he turns back to his computer screen.

The second Saturday is longer. Shintaro doesn't notice, of course, but as the hours drag on, he feels something like desperation. But it's trivial, to be dismissed because feelings, as he's learned, do not matter. Feelings can be replicated and broken and hurt too easily, and he refuses to risk that anymore. When he types the word 'depression' into the search bar, he swears that he can catch a glimpse of his own reflection in his dusty screen.

The third Saturday, he remembers. He remembers a girl with a red scarf who sat among the flowers and a girl who laughed and sang and skipped. None of them matter, he decides. Just like emotions, they do not matter. When he thinks about the abandoned hallways and once-lively rooms outside of his own, a lump forms in Shintaro's throat that he has a difficult time swallowing.

The fourth Saturday, he realizes he hasn't eaten at all in what seems like forever. In reality (Reality, how silly.) it's only been a few days, at least according to the numbers on the upper right side of his screen. The realization itself doesn't come with much of a start, but the realization that he feels no pain or no need for food or water is a surprise, to say the least.

Shintaro wonders for a moment if he's even human anymore.

The fifth Saturday (A full school week, how impressive) he gets up. Pulling himself out of the comfort of the desk chair is a chore in itself, but he gets up and pulls the blinds down, erasing the last trace of the forgotten world outside. Shintaro realizes he's forgotten what it even looks like. Perhaps it's better that way.

The sixth Saturday (Why are the dates always the same on the online calendar? Shintaro doesn't understand it, but knows better than to question it.) he realizes that his legs have gone numb from sitting for so long. A lot like his feelings, really. He chuckles at his own joke, the sole source of sound in the dark, empty house. He remembers again, looks up a photo of a red scarf and stares at it for a few hours, every pixel of it boring into his empty eyes.

The seventh Saturday is boring. Shintaro wonders if he's in hell. He probably is, he decides.

The eighth Saturday-oh, who is he kidding, he's not going to count anymore-he looks at himself in the webcam. Dark circles under his eyes like bruises punishing him for refusing to sleep. Messy, uncombed hair. Skin almost white from a lack of sunlight. The first word that comes to mind seeing himself is _corpse._

He stops counting the days after that. The revelation of the seventh Saturday is in fact incorrect; Shintaro concludes that he is in purgatory, not hell.

On what might be the seventeenth Saturday, his stomach begins to ache. First subtle and then full-on streched out aches, as though someone is sticking through his abdomen with knives. It hits him that he no longer cares. His body is only a vessel, that's what the digital world has taught him. A body is but a carrying case for the mind.

Then again, his mind isn't a very nice place either.

On the twentieth Saturday, Shintaro throws up. He doesn't know what it is he's purging from his body, but it comes out and he's panting and it's all over his floor and oh, god, Kisaragi, you are disgusting, you are a mess. For a long while after that, he stares at the door knob. He'd never paid much attention to it before, but now suddenly it seems so dangerous and so very far away from wherever it is that he is.

Long after the twentieth Saturday, the numbers on his computer still have not changed. The same summer day, the same hateful, stupid summer day when he chose to shut the door. That's what really gets him. He chose this all for himself. He types again and again onto a document that he is human, vowing that he'll write it until he believes it.

With the stench that surrounds him, he thinks subhumanity is probably pretty close to where he is.

Sometimes Shintaro counts, and on what he believes to be the fortieth Saturday, it hits him that time isn't passing. It's not his lack of perception; time has really stopped dead in its tracked. He's reliving the day when things fell apart again and again and again. This doesn't startle him as much as it should. Instead, Kisaragi Shintaro laughs. Nobody hears.

The thought occurs to him that he must be insane.

The next day, he screams. He screams and screams and screams and screams and tears at the wall with his nails, as though that will somehow break it. The walls do not say anything back. The buzz of his laptop is suddenly the sound of an enemy, and before he can say or do anything he grabs it and smashes it into the ground.

The mess of wires that used to be his only companion is gone. Now there's only Shintaro, sitting alone on his bed, losing his mind.

For the first time, he sleeps. It's quiet and blissfully devoid of nightmares. For a moment, Shintaro wonders if he's dreaming it all. If he'll wake up and his sisters will be there to smile and make breakfast and laugh and his family will be there again. Did he even have a family once upon a time? It's really not clear anymore.

A boy named Kano is the one who frees him. He talks too much and always wears a hoodie. He kicks down the door and drags Shintaro out, Shintaro who is all of the sudden crying because there's _light_ and it hurts.

There's a girl named Kido, too. She doesn't talk much but holds authority over everyone. Shintaro finds himself glad that she doesn't talk much, because he sees a ribbon tied around her wrist that he swears was Momo's once upon a time.

Kano tells him that some people have died because of him.

Shintaro doesn't care.

Kano yells at him a few times, treats him like a punching bag.

Shintaro doesn't care.

He wonders if he has it in him to care about anything anymore. When he poses the question to Kano, finally speaking, Kano tells him to fuck off.

Shintaro agrees.

* * *

**i literally just poured all my shitty feelings into this haha bye **


End file.
